A fiber to the curb system is designed to deliver both telephony and high data rate packetized data including digitally encoded full motion video. This is delivered to a home or other end user. In order to provide such delivery, telephony and packet data signals must be carried over a fiber optic communication link from a host digital terminal to an optical network unit. However, telephony and packet data signals are inherently different. Packet data signals may be optimally carried in an asynchronous transfer mode--(ATM) cell format. Telephony signals are considered to be optimally carried in a time division multiplexed format. There is no industry standard procedure for carrying signals between a host digital terminal and an optical network unit. Each manufacturer independently determines what transport and multiplexing technology to implement. The transport and multiplexing technology is an important design and implementation choice that affects the performance of services delivered by the system, the cost of the system, the complexity of the design, fault detection identification and diagnosis, manufacturability of the system, as well as other operational aspects of the system. Therefore, it is desirable to be able to transport both packet data and telephony signals across a fiber optic communication link.